Konecranes Plc (KNCRF) Q4 2024 Earnings Call Transcript

2025-02-07 14:50:17 ET

Konecranes Plc (KNCRF)

Q4 2024 Results Conference Call

February 7, 2025 04:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Kiira Froberg - Head, Investor Relations

Anders Svensson - Chief Executive Officer

Teo Ottola - Chief Financial Officer

Conference Call Participants

Ilaria Buricelli - Goldman Sachs

Antti Kansanen - SEB

Mikael Doepel - Nordea

Panu Laitinmaki - Danske Bank

Johan Eliason - Kepler Cheuvreux

Tom Skogman - Carnegie

Erkki Vesola - Inderes

Presentation

Kiira Froberg

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Konecranes earnings conference. We reported our Q4 earnings and 2024 financial statement release today. My name is Kiira Froberg, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Konecranes. And here with me, I have our usual people, President and CEO, Anders Svensson; and CFO, Teo Ottola.

Before we start, just a kind reminder, please remember that the presentation includes forward-looking statements. Anders will start and talk about the group level figures. And after that, Teo will focus more on the business segment level numbers. And the presentation is followed by Q&A. [Operator Instructions].

Thanks a lot. Anders, it's your turn now.

Anders Svensson

Thank you, Kiira, and a warm welcome also from my side. So the headline of this quarter is a strong end to an excellent year. And our demand held up really well also in the last quarter of the year. It's actually the second highest order intake for a quarter ever, almost at EUR 1.2 billion and we ended at 26% up from the previous year. Our sales execution was also strong in the quarter, and we delivered the highest sales in the single quarter ever above EUR 1.2 billion. And with that strong sales execution, we managed to deliver a new all-time high for a fourth quarter comparable EBITA margin of 13.2%. Free cash flow was really strong and even excellent in the quarter at EUR 170 million. And the 2024 dividend proposal is EUR 1.65 per share. That's EUR 0.30 up from the previous year.

And now moving to the market environment, and I'll start with the Industrial segments. And even though the macro indicators like the manufacturing PMI and the manufacturing capacity utilization are all showing weakness we managed to deliver a very strong order intake in -- also in our Industrial segment. We move into the Ports market environment. And here, we can see that it's remained high container throughput throughout the year and also in the fourth quarter. And we can see that reflected also in our order funnel with ports and activities there, up 3% on a year-on-year comparison.

I'm moving to the group order intake and net sales. And as I said, very strong order intake, EUR 1,167 billion, second strongest order intake in a quarter ever, up 26% versus the previous year. And we saw that Ports was reporting really strong order intake, followed by also strong order intake in Industrial Equipment. If we look at the regions, we saw an increase in EMEA and Americas, while we saw a decrease in APAC. Sales execution, as I said, new record for a quarterly sales number at EUR 1,213 billion, that's up 5.5% versus the previous year. And here, we saw improvement in all segments. And when we come to the regions, Americas and APAC were significantly growing, while we saw a flattish sales in EMEA versus the previous year....

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